


A House Is Not A Home

by thelittlethings



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, M/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 10:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlethings/pseuds/thelittlethings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jackson had better things to worry about than the kid being abused across the street. If you ask him, he was doing Isaac a favor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A House Is Not A Home

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something I wrote a few months back while I was still in the mourning period of post season two. I thought their connection was interesting, to say the least.

“Did you know Isaac’s father was hitting him?” The Sheriff stared at him in concern, the look in his eyes unreadable.

Jackson didn’t like that he couldn’t read him. He hid his obvious discomfort under a shelter of bravado that he had long since learned was nearly foolproof at cementing his image. “Hitting him?” he scoffed. “He was kicking the crap out of him.” 

“Did you ever say anything to anyone? A teacher? A parent? Anyone?” Sheriff Stilinski was incredulous, each inquiry sounding his disapproval.

“Nope. It’s not my problem.” 

It had taken a long time for him to convince himself he was telling the truth. Years, in fact. 

The Lahey family lived across from the Whittemores since they were in preschool. Once upon a time, they had even played together. When Jackson’s father had to work overtime, Mrs. Lahey picked he and Isaac up from school. She took them home and let them have cookies. Jackson thought that her cookies tasted a little bit better than the ones his mom gave him, the ones she always told him she baked. 

Turns out, the white lie about the cookies was the least of Jackson’s concerns. 

When he finally reached an age where they thought he was mature enough to know, they told him the news. He was adopted. 

They’d read all the books. They’d researched and looked over every possible way to break the news to their son, but still, it didn’t help. Jackson was disgusted. At first, he was in denial. They had to be his parents. They had to be. They always talked about how he was going to grow up to be just like his dad. How could he, when he wasn’t even his biological father? How could they lie to him for years and years and years?

Jackson’s answer? They couldn’t. They were just playing some huge practical joke that just so happened to not be funny. Jackson decided to act like they’d never had the discussion, hoping that the memory would just go away. It would be like he never knew, all over again. He could be content with that. His parents couldn’t. They sat him down a second time, making sure they understood just who he was and where he came from, to the best of their knowledge. They told him about his real parents, how he was the miracle that came from a very bad thing. 

He was livid. He screamed at them, hated them for what they’d done. They  _lied_ to him. They didn't deserve his love, let alone his  _trust_. 

 _I had to lose my family twice_ , he kept thinking. He lost his family even before he was born, when he was pried out of his mother’s body following the accident. He didn’t even get a chance to know them. He didn’t know that his parents had died, didn’t know that he wasn’t his mother’s child or his father’s son. Not by blood. 

He felt that was the greatest betrayal of all. They’d raised him and told him that in a family, there was love, there was closeness, and there was acceptance. His father had said that especially in his line of work, there was no room for secrets if things were going to turn out well. 

 _Hypocrite_ , Jackson thought. The both of them. 

It took he and his parents a lot of solitary nights and heated talks to begin to come to terms with the new aspects of their life. They betrayed his trust, and Jackson believed they had to work to earn it back. Slowly, they did. They worked as hard as they could and tried to be the loving parents he’d believed them to be before. He started to forgive them, but he couldn’t do it fully. Jackson felt like a huge part of his past was hidden from him, and in truth, it had been. He wasn’t sure who he was anymore. 

Jackson lost the ability to say, “I love you,” to his family. That, to him, was the greatest loss of all. Sure, he could say it to Lydia, but he wasn’t quite sure what love really was anymore. She was his girlfriend. He was supposed to love her. He was also supposed to love his parents, and he did, but he could never get over their secret enough to say the words again. They stole that away from him, the ease and comfort he used to have. They were still his family. They were all he had. It just wasn’t the same, and he couldn’t help but think things would be different if they’d just  _told_  him.

When Isaac’s mother left and things changed, Jackson started to notice that Isaac was changing too. Of course, they weren’t quite friends anymore, but it was hard to miss the sharp breaths he took when they were changing in the locker room, or the purple rings around his eyes Jackson saw when he rode past him in his fancy Porsche that his parents bought him as an apology. 

Jackson remembered when he found out Camden died, and then everything about Isaac changed. He noticed that Isaac was always the first or the last to the locker room. He saw the ways he tried to walk strategically to hide his limping or change his hair around a bit to conceal the bruises. From across the street, Jackson could hear Mr. Lahey’s booming voice breaking the silence of the night. Sometimes, he heard plates shatter when the windows were open. He would hear Mr. Lahey's bellows and he would shut his windows. He’d go to his bed and lay down, shut his eyes and try to forget. 

Yes, Jackson knew that Isaac was being abused. He knew that Isaac’s father was kicking the crap out of him. 

But Mr. Lahey was still Isaac’s family, and he would not be the guy who took that away from him. He and Isaac were friends once. Jackson believed that it was only right to keep his mouth shut. 

If he told, Mr. Lahey went to jail, and nobody knew what would happen to Isaac. He didn’t have any family. If he did, he would have gone to live with them. He would have been thrown into the system and tossed around. Jackson figured that foster care would be worse than living with Mr. Lahey, because Mr. Lahey still loved Isaac, in his own convoluted way. He wasn’t a _good_ father, no, but he was _a_ father. Jackson would not deny him that. 

When the Sheriff asked him why he never told anyone, he choked out the first answer he could think of _._ "Nope. Not my problem."   


The doubt came with an empty feeling in his gut. When he got home, after the interrogation from his own father, he stared at the ceiling, his entire body shaking. 

He’d told the Sheriff that it wasn’t his problem. 

_But wasn’t it?_


End file.
